Thank you, Mr. Gust, Mr. Hermanson, and Mr. Miles.
Mr. Gust, thank you for your presentation.
My question is about value-added processing. I agree with you that we need to open markets. There's no question that's important. I understand there are a lot of tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers that keep us from exporting a lot of our processed goods, with other countries preferring our unprocessed resources and produce.
My concern is that in the last six years, we have had a 10% reduction in people working on farms and a 10% reduction in farm operations. We have a migration of people from rural areas into urban areas. I think we need more processing going on in rural areas, or urban areas, frankly, supplied by farmers.
Can you tell me what opportunities exist to expand processing? What should government be doing to encourage processing and value-added processing so that we can make our rural areas more robust?